Mountains of the Moon (9 page)

“Coffee for the road!” Tim says.

I finish packing away the last of the clay, the jars of slip and glaze, and wash the brushes at the sink. Twenty-five people made a terrible mess. Brilliant terrible mess, days like today make it worthwhile. The group from the hospital really enjoy it, pleasant chatter: news of people not present, plans already on going home at Christmas; Radio 4 reassuring in the background, people coming in and out of the conversation, in and out of the tea room, in and out on their medication. It’s better since we pushed all of the tables together, we can see each other. Some people can’t get on with shaping the raw clay, they prefer to paint. I always make a selection of pots and bowls and plates for them to decorate. We’ve got amazing colors now. A couple of weeks ago we had a stall at Redland fête, sold off loads of abandoned items. We spent the proceeds on a drum of white porcelain clay and beautiful powder colors. The two are mixed together with water to make this clay-based paint called slip. Twenty-seven colors now, red and black was driving us mad. The illustrated seed catalogue I bought from a charity shop is proving really useful too for flower colors and petal shapes. Today they painted green Christmas roses, sunflower splashes, purple pansies with black eyes, blue campanula bells, pink tulip cups, double delphinium rosettes, raspberry dots and seed pods. A wave of tiredness goes over my head. I’ve got three hours more to kill before I have to go to work. I dry my hands. We’ve done it. The workshop is shipshape. Loads to do tomorrow though. Coffee for the road.

I sit down in the tea room with Tim; he’s still cobalt blue like a genie from a bottle. He dropped a paper sack of blue slip—the powder exploded like a bomb in his face. The patients from the hospital loved it. Terrible mess but good stuff, everyone was well engaged and inspired. We are becoming victims of our own success, can’t really cope with such large groups but days like today make us proud, working together as we do. Tim chuckles, shakes his head.

“Bloomin heck, I’d still have been here clearing up at nine o’clock. Are you working at the factory tonight?”

“Start at seven.”

“Bloomin heck,” he says. “It can’t be right. I need you here, paid and full-time, the people need you here. I told them again at the meeting last night.”

He keeps asking and means well, but if there was an official paid job, it wouldn’t be me that got it.

“I’m not qualified, Tim, not with clay or mental health.”

“No one would know,” he says. “I mean, look at me.”

I look at him. He is a blue genie. Loves his job, his beautiful schizophrenic wife and pregnant schoolgirl daughter.

“So what did King Cuckoo say?”

“No money.” Tim shakes his head. “And there you are putting bloomin jam in bloomin doughnuts.”

“There I
was
putting jam in doughnuts.”

“Where, why, what?”

“I shouldn’t have done it, Tim. I was supposed to finish at two last night; it was quarter to five in the morning. The thing is: they said I might be asked to do an extra hour occasionally, but it’s not occasionally, it’s two or three hours every night. I’ve already done fourteen extra hours this week. I’m going home, I said.”

Tim likes the way I tell them.

“‘
That’s it—you just think of yourself
,’ the Blue Icing Bride spat in my face. ‘
I’m sorry, Elspeth, but someone’s got to tell her, I don’t know who Ashley thinks she is.
’”

“Who’s Ashley?” Tim says.

“Search me. I’ll come in for my shift tomorrow, I said, I’ll work eight hours according to my contract. I’ll do an extra hour occasionally, but now, I said, I’m going home.”

“Well, if that’s what your contract says,” Tim agrees.

“‘
No one’s allowed to go!’
” Elspeth was screaming at the back of my head as I parked the white wellies in my locker. “I just walked out, Tim, past all the icing brides.”

“Heart in your throat then tonight?” Tim says. “Icing brides.”

“They were sharpening their palette knives, in the gaps between their teeth.”

Stupid. Principle isn’t going to pay the rent. Volunteering at the pottery isn’t going to pay the rent. I notice the time.

“Fuck! The kiln, Tim!”

“The kiln!” He stands up and runs to reduce the temperature.

If I get sacked Unemployment and Housing Benefit won’t pay me a penny for six weeks; they like to give you a massive financial slap as punishment for your courage or stupidity. I rummage about in my bag for a crumb of tobacco that I know doesn’t exist. A primrose letter from my solicitor is still in my bag, didn’t have time to open it this morning. Bastards. I rip the letter open and prepare to spit tacks. Re: your accident, in the previous decade. Phone urgently. Pain and suffering. Eight thousand pounds. I check the letterhead; it’s definitely addressed to Beverley Woods.

“Eight thousand pounds will put some electric on your meter,” Tim says.

It will. It will pay the rent if I get fired at the doughnut factory. That’s not the point. Eight thousand pounds isn’t meant for paying rent. I want to smile but it slides away from me. Tim hands me a sheet of kitchen roll.

“It’s just a shock, that’s all, Tim,” I say. “Now that they’ve backed down, on principle I feel like telling them to shove it.”

“You can fix your apartment up now,” he says. “Get a carpet; get a fridge, a cooker—washing machine.”

“A machine gun to shoot the neighbors.”

I read the letter again. Phone urgently, to accept, says Mr. Mac.

Tree commotion wakes me up. There’s a lorry with a container outside my window, outside everybody’s window. It’s Heath; he’s trying to park the lorry on the pavement, tight against the vicarage wall, tangling with trees. The taxi man doesn’t know whether to guard his car or the telephone box, but he needn’t worry, Heath is good at parking lorries. The hydraulic handbrake hisses. Heath climbs out of the cab and stands up on the vicarage wall. I open the window.

“Come in, number 9,” I call.

He climbs from the vicarage wall on to a fixed ladder, then up on to the roof of the lorry’s blue container. He’s got something to show me. He does a handstand on the edge. A one-hand handstand. Balanced upside down on the one bowed arm, he is perfectly still. I can feel the stress, the tension, in my diaphragm, in my eardrums, in one particular heart valve.
Breathe.
The sycamore tree is shedding its helicopter seeds. He’s still upside down. He doesn’t know how lucky he is. Gwen has been watching the apartment for nearly two months but she doesn’t do alternate Tuesdays, probably has to sign on in Wales or something. Heath is still upside down.

“Come in, number 6,” I call.

He’s such an arsehole, somersaults off the end of the lorry and lands on his feet. I hadn’t seen that Sharon is with him, she appears with little Jennifer on her hip. Tarka, Heath’s Alsatian dog, is barking bonkers in the road. I see the boy, Gavin, slip behind them into the pub, with a little bastard backward look. I know he’s only nine years old but I wish they’d serve him a pint of Guinness and keep him in there. Heath goes in to get him.

I can hear them coming up the stairs and suddenly wish I was on the ninety-ninth floor. I open the door. The dog stands up like a bear to greet me.

“Tarka! Get down!” Heath yells. I skid through the hall, no traction on the slippery floor. The dog slams me against the lounge wall. I’d like to yell myself but it’s got its tongue down my throat. Heath hauls it off me. Usually Heath is white as Basildon Bond but the upside-down stunt on the lorry has left him pink and puffing. Hasn’t been training. All of their hot breath steams into my freezing lounge.

“I had to go to Windsor to pick up this container,” he says. “Legoland was great.”

“We thought we’d call in and see you for a change,” Sharon says. “Don’t touch that, Gavin. Gavin! Put it down!”

“I want the toilet, Mummy, the toilet, Mummy, the toilet, Mummy,” Jennifer says.

“Gavin!” Sharon yells. “Mind the mirror!”

“What do you think of my new beauty?” Heath says.

He means the Scania, I gather.

“Well, it’s a big apartment,” Sharon says. “It’ll be nice when you’ve done it. Gavin! I won’t tell you again! Sit down on the sofa and don’t you dare move.”

“There isn’t a sofa,” Gavin says.

“He’s got a point,” Heath says.

“Sit down under the—tree,” Sharon yells.

“Tarka!”

Tarka has gone in the bathroom, sounds like he’s on to something behind the bath panel. He’s clawing at it.

“Gavin! I won’t tell you again.”

“Nice cup of black unsweetened tea?” I say.

“I’m all right thanks,” Sharon says.

“I’ve got some coffee in my cab. Shaz, go and get the coffee from the cab.”

“Yeah, but babes, we’re not staying that long.”

“How was Legoland?” I ask.

Heath doesn’t hear me because Gavin is trying to climb on his head. The emptiness of my apartment seems to recommend a bout of contact sport. Sharon joins in, throwing punches and her pigtails. The dog skids in, taking the paint off the floor with its claws and joins in.

“Bloody hell, babes,” Sharon says. “That really hurt.”

“You think that hurt, try this.”

“Babes!” She clutches her dead arm.

It gets too painful for the dog, it skanks back to the bath panel.

“I could go and get the coffee,” I suggest.

“Now that is a stonking idea,” Heath says.

I take the Scania keys downstairs. My bare feet melt a sifting of frost on the pavement. The lock is smooth. I climb up in the new Scania and
sit at the wheel. I sit and sit. The phone box starts ringing; the taxi man gets out of his car to answer it, and then takes off up the hill. Tim reckons it won’t be long until everyone’s got a mobile phone. Heath’s black holdall is on the bunk bed behind the seats. Same stuff in the bag: white karate outfit; the black belts; his other jeans; green designer suit with zip pockets; worn-out
Lord of the Rings
. The gold-colored plastic canister is still in the bag. I shake it and listen, light bone fragments of Heath’s dad rattle on the surface of the heavy ash. Remember the witch’s house, every hair stands up. Think about the two boys, playing in the woods, the crossbow versus the gun. I find the jar of coffee at the bottom of the bag. Then loiter by the bins and breathe before going back in.

Jennifer is immune to the sport, sucking ferociously on a round lollipop. I skirt around the fight action in the lounge and pick her up, take her in the kitchen. She sits on my hip and helps me make coffee.

“I got sacked last night,” I tell her. “Brian gave me my P45;
troublemaker
was the word he used.”

Jennifer pulls the lolly out of her mouth. It pops.

“
Troublemaker.
Uh-huh. It made me laugh.”

She doesn’t believe me.

“That wasn’t
trouble
, Brian, I said, it made me laugh so hard. Trouble. Unfair dismissal. Another thirteen-year fucking battle.”

Jennifer looks worried.

“It’s OK,” I say. “Between you and me I’ve got some money coming. Eight thousand pounds. Are you having a coffee?”

“I’m three,” she says.

“Babes!” Sharon says. “That does it, babes; you’re too rough, you’ve really hurt him this time.”

“He isn’t hurt, are you, little man? Come on, little man? Gavin? Ouch! You little bastard, you’ll pay for that.”

We get the coffee made. Jennifer’s hair is palest auburn; I could kiss her silky crown. I’m afraid to kiss her, in case I can’t stop. She is so warm on my hip. I lean on the door frame, watch Heath in the middle of the
lounge performing the Seven Swords. He can still lift his foot way up above his head, and hold it there; playing with air, with tall man’s ears, with light bulbs. Memory sees his toes toying with light bulbs at Park Lane. He smashed bulbs all over the house, left us constantly in the dark.

“Mind the mirror, Gavin!” Sharon says.

He says he hasn’t trained for years but he’s still deadly. Even his penis goes in like a dagger.

“You all right?” Heath says. “There was an old lady that swallowed a fly. Hee-ha, catch me if you can, little boy, little boy.”

Sharon takes a breather.

“You OK?” she says.

“Bit tickle stomached.”

“Hee-ha, little boy, you’ll have to do better than that,” Heath says.

Gavin, flying through the air, lands a butterfly kick on his jaw. They’re all sweating and panting now, snorting steam.

“Mind! Gavin! The mirror!” Sharon says.

“Come on, you lot,” Heath says. “We’d better get going.”

“I made coffee,” I say.

“We’d better get going,” Sharon says. “Long drive back to Manchester.”

Tarka starts barking. Heath puts his jacket on. These days he wears a gold stud in his ear. Memory hears Gwen’s voice, clear as an elocution lesson:
what is there to lose?
I close my eyes, hear the blast, and smell Quentin’s blood, all over my hands, all over my lap.

“Last one to the truck’s a woozy,” Heath says.

They go. I sit. I look again at the letter from Mr. Mac. Eight thousand pounds. I look at the gaps in the kitchen; try to imagine a cooker, a fridge. I look in the bedroom; try to see a bed with pillows and quilts. A car door slams. The phone box starts ringing.